In 1933, when Belgium colonized Rwanda, a census was held in which Rwandans were issued identity cards, but they indicated whether they were Tutsi or Hutus. At that time, the method of delineating the ethnic group was very simple: those with more than 10 cattle in the family were considered Tutsi, those below 10 cattle looked at the skin color, height and width of the nose bridge, light skin, tall, and wide nose bridge were considered Tutsi, and the rest were all identified as Hutu, in fact, the two races were not much different, the original Hutu and Tutsi did not have a strict distinction, they intermarried with each other and converted to each other, and the rich Hutu people would enter the ranks of the chief's management and eventually be absorbed into the Tutsi And the poor and depressed Tutsis will also go back to the fields to cultivate the land and become Hutu, which is such a difference in identity that lays the foundation for the Rwandan genocide.
Movie Rwanda Hotel
After a simple ethnic division, during the half-century of colonial rule, the high-status Tutsi helped the Belgian colonists manage their country, and naturally enjoyed better education, health care and social status. The wealth gap is also even more disparity. This has led to the Hutu people slowly unbalanced in their hearts, the country is colonized, the people are oppressed, and the heart is full of resentment, so the Hutu people transfer hatred to the Tutsi people day by day.
After the end of World War II, Belgium gradually transferred its administration from a wealthy Tutsi to a large number of hutu who had been oppressed for a long time. The Hutu took over the reins, the hatred accumulated over the past few decades could finally be liquidated, and the Tutsis were suppressed and excluded. Despite this adjustment, Belgian rule lasted only three years, and in 1962 the Belgians returned home to Rwanda to gain independence, and the Hutu established a new state with the support of France, and the status of the Tutsis was completely reversed.
Hutu people carry various props
Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, the Hutu people who have seized power begin to consciously retaliate against the Tutsi, the Tutsi have been living under great pressure since then, and the slightest carelessness will break out under the leadership of the official, and the status of the Tutsi people cannot even reach the third class of citizens, and they are called "cockroaches" or "Belgian lackeys" by the Hutu people
The trigger for the massacre: the unprecedented massacre began on April 6, 1994, when the Hutu president suffered an airstrike in Rwanda, causing mutual suspicion between the two peoples.
The Hutu people controlled the radio station, the Hutu officially acquiesced, and in the radio to publicize the massacre, fanning the flames, the out-of-control crowd hunted and slaughtered the Tutsi under the ignition of the radio broadcast, and even the red-eyed female prime minister and her soldiers were slaughtered by the mob, and for a time the corpses were bloody, and the air was full of blood! In just three months, less than a hundred days, one-eighth of the country's population, nearly a million people, died!
Corpses are strewn across the field
The populous Hutu had been preparing for the day three months earlier, buying large quantities of ammunition and machetes, which were then distributed to the army and the militia, and the ordinary people, who were lower than the militia, prepared their own kitchen knives or sharpened wooden sticks. The code name is "Cut down the tallest trees," which refers to the taller Tutsi. Although the Tutsi heard the wind from their Hutu friends before the incident, they did not realize that they would target ordinary people.
On the night of the president's assassination, a vicious and terrifying man on the radio shouted the slogan: Cut down the tallest trees, right now! So the Hutu people of the whole country poured out of the nest, holding guns, machetes, agricultural tools, and sticks, starting with their neighbors, the elderly, children, babies, pregnant women.
Inside the Genocide Memorial
The wandering Tutsis formed their own organization, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and three months later the RPF invaded the capital Kigali with Ugandan troops and defeated the Hutu government. It was not that the FLF came late, but that it would take time to defeat the Hutus, and if the victory was one day late, the massacre would last an extra day. After the Tutsi invaded the capital, the situation reversed again, and for three months the Hutus armed with machetes feared liquidation, so they rolled up their homes and fled Rwanda to neighboring Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fleeing more than 2 million people.
The Tutsi people in power at that time seriously engaged in national reconciliation, resettling returning refugees and trying massacre criminals who did not flee, and the political situation gradually stabilized.
The days of suffering will always pass, and now Rwandans have come out of the shadow of the massacre, they are serious about construction, and the economic growth rate has long been among the best in the African region, becoming a star country in Africa. There is no longer a "national component" on the identity card of Rwandans, because Rwanda now has only one ethnic group, the Rwandans. Tourism is an important industry in Rwanda, and friends who go there to play must pay attention to one thing: the locals are very taboo to talk about ethnic composition, and even more taboo to talk about the past of the Massacre.